I'm a blog and business coach who strives to help conscious, creative entrepreneurs build and grow sustainable, service-based businesses online.

I'm Lauren Dailey.

Bohemian

BY THE BAY

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How to use Pinterest to promote your business

Over the years, I’ve learned a thing or two about helping creative entrepreneurs grow their business online. One of my FAVORITE platforms to use is Pinterest. Why? Well, let’s get into why you need to be using it stat!

Are you struggling to get traffic to your website?

Have you tried all the social media platforms?

Well, I think you should definitely give Pinterest a try! Why?

WHY YOU SHOULD BE ON PINTEREST

Pinterest is a growing platform, every day people are looking for solutions to their problems. What if they could find your product or service? There are more than 250 million active users on Pinterest and they’re not just mindlessly scrolling down their feed, they’re searching for something specific.

So what can you do to market your business on Pinterest?

First of all, you should publish content on a consistent basis. You may have a blog, a podcast or a YouTube channel, what matters is that you create new content for your audience once a week, or at least twice a month.

Now it’s time to create or optimise your Pinterest account!

Make sure you follow these steps:

PROFILE OPTIMIZATION

– Convert your personal account to a business account.
– Include keywords in your profile name. Not enough space? Change it on your mobile (on desktop you can’t enter more than 30 characters).
– Include keywords and a Call to Action in the profile description. For example you could say ‘Get your free guide here’ and then add the link.
– Make sure that the profile picture is the same across all the accounts (Instagram, Facebook, etc.)
– Claim your website.
– Claim these accounts: Instagram, Etsy and YouTube (if applicable).
– Apply for rich pins.
– Follow relevant accounts in the same niche.

BOARDS OPTIMIZATION

– Make sure that your boards are relevant for your ideal client. For example, a health coach may have boards around recipes, health and fitness, but a travel board may not really fit in. So what can you do in this situation? Make it secret! You’ll still be able to save from it and go back to it, but it’s not part of your business.
– Include keywords in board names and board descriptions.
– Choose the right category for the board.
– Make sure that the first board only features the blog’s content. This is going to be your main board, you’ll pin all your content here.
– Use the showcase feature and choose the most relevant board (or boards). Usually it’s the one featuring your blog’s content.
– Go to Boards and select Drag and Drop: in this way, you can choose the order in which the boards appear. I put the most relevant topics first, then complementary topics and I leave Group Boards at the end.

And then it’s time to create the perfect pins and automate everything with my favorite tool, Tailwind. With Tailwind you can create board lists, and automate your pins so they will be published when your audience is most active.

KEYWORDS

Pinterest is not a social media platform, it’s a search engine, so you must take into account SEO: search engine optimization, which is all about using the keywords that your ideal client is actually looking for. You don’t need something fancy, only what works.

So, let’s see, where do you find these keywords?
The beauty of Pinterest (and one of the reasons why I love it so much!) is that the own platform gives you the answer!
Yes, on the search bar on your Pinterest home, you can type in a word and see what appears.
So, for example, let’s say you’re a health coach and you type ‘plant based’, you can see here the results.

If you want more data, you can also look at the keywords that appear below, it’s such valuable information!

So now you know that you could create a ‘Plant based recipes’ board, another good one could be ‘plant based diet for beginners’ and so on.

But boards names are not the only place where you should include your keywords.

Keywords get you found, but it’s images that get you clicked!
Let’s see what you need to take into account when creating your Pinterest graphics:

-Your images should be vertical, the perfect ratio is 2:3.
Pinterest has announced that images longer than 1260 pixels will be shown less.
If you go with 600 x 900 pixels, that’s perfect.

-High quality photos are essential! If you’re selling a service, you can use free stock photos. If you can afford it, it’s better to pay for a stock photo membership, because the free ones can be found in many places and your audience notices it!

-The font you choose should be very clear. I know you love script fonts, but usually they’re not so easy to read, you can choose one sans serif (like Futura or Helvetica), or even one serif as long as it’s clear! Remember that 80% of people scroll through Pinterest on their phones, so make sure that the text is clean and not too small!

-Try to use your brand colors, so people start to recognise your pins, and remember to
have your website address or your logo on the pin!

Now it’s time to get to work to optimize your Pinterest profile, do some keyword research and create beautiful graphics, so you can finally see more people coming to your website!